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The Energy Blog is where all topics relating to The Energy Revolution are presented. Increasingly, expensive oil, coal and global warming are causing an energy revolution by requiring fossil fuels to be supplemented by alternative energy sources and by requiring changes in lifestyle. Please contact me with your comments and questions. Further Information about me can be found HERE.

February 25, 2007

Wind Energy to Charge Vehicle Batteries, Reduce Peak Demand

California's biggest utility, Pacific Gas & Electric Co., is considering a plan to charge fleets of battery-powered cars overnight with wind energy and let consumers sell back some of the stored electricity during the day.

In addition to reducing oil consumption and greenhouse gas emissions from standard cars, the plan could help stoke production of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and give power managers more energy capacity on the grid for hot summer afternoons, speakers said at a "clean technology" investment conference in San Francisco this week. ...

A power grid-to-car-batteries hookup, however, is probably at least five to six years away, Felix Kramer, founder of CalCars, said at the cleantech conference. ...

And still provide storage when parked. Most vehicles are parked most of the time. So on average this type of storage would work well.

But it will take broadband internet over the utility lines to work right. All those individual car batteries will need to be controlled from a central location. The phone or cable companies are not reliable enough and way too expensive a way to provide this internet connection.

By opening the way for wireless internet broadcast over and from and to power lines to replace all these redundant buried cables and cell phone towers, the productivity increase will more than pay for the whole system.

Susan, having owned a sail boat in San Francisco bay, I know more about the wind in those parts than PG&E. Pacific Gas and Electric has low emissions because they have a large amount of hydro. They also own two large nukes that they bungled the construction on causing electricity rates to be among the most expensive nation wide. PG&E also gets 42% of its electricity from natural gas. When PG&E owned those plants they were among the dirties least efficient plants until another company took them over and invested in cleaning them up.

If citizens of California want to criticize those in cold climates depending on coal, maybe you should check on how mush coal generated electricity is imported into California. Also wind, hydro, and natural gas. If you are not, sure call PG&E and ask how much wind generation they own.

Clee, I did visit PG&E web site just to see if they suddenly got green or if it was the same old spin machine. Let me give you another example. A west coast city claims to be gag free because they sold their share in a coal plant. The coal plant is still burning as much coal as ever and the city has not done anything to develop new clean sources of energy. The city has a $2M PR budget. I know this because it is a public utility and they disclose their spending.

If you want to defend PG&E show me what renewable energy projects that they are developing and how it relates to PHEV.

Kit-P - "Two problems with this idea. There is not excess wind power in California and never will be. "

At certain times of the day there is excess wind in any system due to a number of factors. You can slow a gas turbine down to reduce power but the only way to reduce a wind turbine is the dump the power. If this power can be stored instead of wasted then this helps renewables raise their capacity factors and despatchability.

"Second, if you use the batteries in PHEVs to feed to the grid on a hot day, more gasoline will be burned when the cars are driven creating more air pollution at the worse time."

As has been said many times before there is no necessity for the gasoline motor in a PHEV to be run at any time to make V2G work. IC engines are very inefficient and this would not make any sense at all. The only energy V2G uses from a PHEV is the energy stored in the battery. As long as there is still fuel in the tank of a PHEV the battery can be quite deeply discharged and the owner can still get places by using the IC motor.

Any practical V2G program would have a way for car owners to set the percentage of battery capacity to be used for grid reserve.

For example, someone planning on driving less than 20 miles and has a 40 mile electric range may dedicate half the capacity for V2G. Someone planning longer trips may opt out for a day or two. And someone staying home over the weekend may dedicate most of their battery capacity to V2G, to maximize the potential profit.

The biggest problems to be solved on V2G is standards for communication, connection, and allocation of costs and payments.

Having your own Wind Turbines at home is a very good way to conserve on your electrical expenses.

Just imagine the amount of money you can save when you have your own power generator providing you with free electricity! A windmill is a very good alternative especially with the economic situation nowadays. It is affordable to your budget and best of all its’ free. You can purchase or build your own wind generator at any hardware store or online site.

Our vehicle runs partially on electricity. I am apart of Embry Riddle's Eco Eagles club. We are Embry Riddle's branch of the EcoCar challenge. We work to design, build and integrate solutions into an existing production vehicle. Solutions such as hybrid, plug-in hybrid and fuel cell drive train technologies will be explored. For further information visit www.ecoeagles.org